helix

one of nature’s great ironies:
to the female peacock,
the male’s display looks much like
ultra-violet iron shavings
responding to a magnet—

color seems not to be
a primary component of
romance among aves.

how, then,
would true love look in AI?

01100010 01101111 01111001
01101101 01100101 01100101 01110100 01110011 00001010
01100111 01101001 01110010 01101100 00001010 00001010 …

(some questions
are better left unanswered)
!
-Rich Follett

*

Of course, to be alive is to be a long time sick, the Twilight of the Idols,
it seems, no worse than the cold light, each new morning, that must rise
again, somehow, without a promise, without God. I don’t want to sound
like another conviction. I’ve found brass in the backroads, the cold stone,
the lonely parts of a field, dug up coins, dug up bullets, and hid them again
with my small feet, out of respect for the feet of the couple walking West,
for work, for the smaller hands, for the new morning; anything worthwhile.

-Alex Mazey

 .deflecting.

it broke
shattered
broken reflections
of a former life

smashed as it hit the floor
things do on quarried
slate

he mended things carefully
an art

watch
you can learn it
too

place the pieces back together
look in the mended mirror

carefully

see those things

deflected

-sbm.

The Anomaly

Strange new mind sets reign in our heads like an interplanetary virus
spreading its unknown influential pulse causing false rumours to
intoxicate our conscience igniting our darkest most secret impulses
turning our controlled thinking into warped imagined casualties urging
us to instinctively react to keep our sanity intact ready for any ill–perceived
imaginary attack to our status quo – All
too willing to lash out speak up remove
recalibrate our usual mental state to question
more interpret differently going against our
natural impulses unknowingly suddenly
accepting a dangerous dubious anomaly…

Falling Skies

A normal morning no warning
acid rain falling spilling into man-made
crevices filling up with humanity’s
self-inflicted collected accidents nature’s
revenge overloading our senses trying our
best to make sense of this despite obvious warnings now visible in multiple aerial frescoes clogging our minds unable to comprehend the
effect or our moral neglect of what we were
meant to protect –

Our blue planet now a diminishing shrinking
entity reversing the status quo as nature’s
forces recalibrate regenerate annihilate whilst we flee from tumbling free-falling
falling skies fading fast into nothingness…

-Don Beukes

Explosion

“I scourged myself today
in sea salt, wind and spray”

Take this anger, really despair,
in a blanket of gentle silence.
To lay on the rock ledge
pitted and wet,
within strike of the sea.

Something inside is
both explosive and caustic.
And as each day builds
containment appears
to be, a vain solution.

But the ocean’s
water soothes,
takes the pain and
wraps it in a sea of
love and indifference.

“Wind chilled, exhilarated:
I turn for home.
And in my emptiness grows
wisdom’s warming glow”

© Dai Fry 23rd May 2020.

Never at Peace

If the earth
Were the sky,
The sky, earth –
We would already be
Creatures
Of the ephemeral.

Clouds and angels
Would be the
Tangible ones
Who bear the burden
Of worldly
Caregiving.

Maybe then,
I could
Finally be content,
Even while knowing
There are others
Who aren’t.

-st

Hold

These days when the eye of the world
droops nearly closed, nictating milk-light.

These days when the skin opaques
stretched thin over the rattle, barely containing it.

These days when the embers of seeds
must fall far from the branch to even think about growing.

These days when the earth licks away
the scrapes of machines, revives the microbe armies.

These days when we hold each other drowning
in the choppy wake of our dwindling water.

These days when we talk and talk
and talk until tongues fork from trying to mean.

These days when we tilt our heads giddy and can’t recall
what we spent every hour worried about.

These days when everyone is made of knives.

These days when the empty sky reflects
only single trees, standing dead still.

=Ankh Spice

The Becoming

stilled. Exploded view
of change from one form to another.
Explosion is creation
of something new.

Multiverse ever expands
until it collapses into itself
draws all into it,
hoards its wealth.

Watercolour drips ever suspended,
raindrops hang over greenery,
wait for the remainder
of the fall in silent liquidity.

All forests are rainforests.
Rain explodes on branches,
Inside your skull the forest
regrows on its haunches.

-Paul Brookes

Cento

These days when we talk and talk
I scourge myself today
in sea salt, wind and spray.
finally to be content

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

 

.. there is a dampness..

they called it heavy
the adults
before a storm

pits hang damp
lips prickling

then he said it

he said it

so I hid in the plant house amongst the smell; the frogs
should I add fetid air or will that just be another cliché

look my device added the required accent there

so it was all dripping down reminding of grandma’s kitchen
brown gloss paint & mustard walls running in cabbage juice

she boiled it dreadful
well they did in those days

no al dente then
it was after the war

now where was i
yes hiding

my heart beating my head out
breath catching
oh no is this my asthma or the disease
going round, have you heard of it

if I tell him I have it will he go, leave me alone
should I cough a lot or is that against the guidelines
even in this situation

I hid a long time, maybe days and when I was sure he
had left

I finally breathed out

flowers

-sbm

Aokigahara Jukai

countless tortured souls
lost to memory and moss–
sad trees bear witness

-Rich Follett

 *

I want to crush a leaf into the palm of my hand, one day’s chlorophyll,
how many times have you appeared in poems, chlorophyll and ghosts,
and death – another listy chlorophyll poem defines the prize category
in an endless sea, sea, sea, and waves, and eternity, and love and hate.
I want to write about a lolly pop touching your lips, I suppose, I’m just
intense in that way, like to see, like to see how many poems are kept
in deep. Kept in a drawer, you heard me – show us your worst poems.

-Alex Mazey

Standing Stones

We walked here once,
stumbling over mossy boulders,
the air thick with moisture,
and scent of pine.

It took hours to find
the standing stones:
man-sized, leaning, marking
a way no longer travelled.

We thought we’d last forever,
leaning in,
I mossy – you lichened –
shoulders to the wind.

Now you are gone,
and the forest felled.
The stones stand under open sky.
I can never go back.

For Mark 23/6/62 – 1/12/16

-Yvonne Marjot

#23

as a child I ran
bare legged
where only me
could see
moss breathing
trees pausing
where am i
that i left
behind
wood a life
whole built
mindfully
absent
from the there

#23MF

the peaceful of end of days when you walk through wearing only flesh the light
just right pain forgotten slipping through and away a way

-Elizabeth Moura

Statistics

Runners find bodies. We don’t talk
about it, but it haunts miles in advance.

I’m the kind who follows
his feet. They remember the time

when they were fins – it’s right there
in the bone. The way they swim

this shadow sleeker than the shape I am
turning currents in the silk-cool air

of an early morning trail. An old sea left its dead
beneath my sweep – shells are gritted teeth. A sea

never follows a path – creatures washed deep
into trench-roots and leaf-dark. Ghost pincers nip

my heels, calves, thighs. Don’t trip. Don’t crush
anything human. Would I know it if it happened.

-Ankh Spice

Communicating

Red hues in green
Tree nature
Are wild shades,
Saying things
No one expected
Them to say –
Drawing unnecessary
Attention, some might claim.
When we spin
The color wheel of the world,
There’s much to learn.
I don’t know all the answers.
I try to listen,
Even when we aren’t
Discussing trees.

-st

Deep Forest

In deep forest
moss cushions of brown leaves.
Branches take their bow.
In deep forest all are strangers.

In deep forest
I carry my shame slowly.
In light’s paucity,
I ponder my place.
Never been worthy
locked down tight,
in the deep forest.

In deep forest
you may think
that I breathe
long in green meadows,
That I walk
in thoughts lost,
That I hold
my lover’s hand, fingers woven.
But my heart I pledge
To deep forest.

In deep forest
they call my name,
shame my sex
and spike me cruel.
I feel less then I should
or care to do.
In sweet melancholia,
I find release.
So in my deep forest,
alone I mourn,
the passing of my turn.

©️ Dai Fry revised May 22nd 2020.

Vivid Visions

Ancient murmurs of subterranean
wise whispers lure me into fantastical
vivid visions of forgotten overgrown forests
of evergreen tired giants from days of past
once glorious existence nature’s persistence
of delivering floral brilliance visible from distant
horizons casting a hazy golden glow turning into
purple halo sound waves emitting secret existential
messages of astonishing dire warnings of indigo
firestorms sweeping a planet not meant to be
neglected –
Of green flames licking the sour earth to alleviate and soothe its neglect whilst
a horde of unknown creatures scatter from bursting volcanoes disappearing into deep bottomless fissures –

I drown in agony from horrid vivid visions…

-Don Beukes

haiku for #2 image:

Life is like the stairs
Falling down the steps cause more
Pain than going up

-Carrie Anne Golden

Your Head Is A

greenhouse full of forest.
Branches fallen across streams
are barbed wire over ditches.
When folk peer into your eyes
as into windows they see leaves.

There is deep greenhouse in roots
that are veins in your brain,
neural pathways you wander down,
inhale decay and growth,
sweetness and sourness,
umami of dry earth.

Imagination is electric impulses
passed between the tree roots
in your head.

Wander the dark, dark
forest hear where twigs break underfoot
slip on the moss of your memory.

-Paul Brookes

cento

Don’t trip
when we spin
in deep forest
they call my name,
shame my sex
and spike me cruel.

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

 

 

*

Dominos stacked, threes and fives, in close proximity to a limoncello.
Once fell in love with a hotel secretary, a strong word for limerence,
for all things, ontological systems. The limerence I feel towards every
day things, every day people, a game of threes and fives on a wooden
table, in a bar, somewhere in the world. There are places in this world
where the mountains will give you headaches, drinking water, bottled
water in a vending machine, in a carpark, elsewhere, on a park bench.

=Alex Mazey

Tower 

Wrapped in roots of long ago.
We left our trees for rich alluvial plains.
For millennia we walked the ground,
Now we live in towers and yearn for forests.

©️ Dai Fry 21st May 2020.

urban primeval

leaves are teeth, and bricks—
in a world turned upside down,
everything threatens

-Rich Follett

.scaffold.

Structure

We’re taught
Skeletons are the
Inside of us,
But bones
Were never the real core.
It’s marrow
That contains
The DNA imprint –
Connects bodies to brains,
Holds the shudder of
New beginnings.
Marrow is
Blood, oxygen, more –
Low frequency
Radio-wave energy,
Hot blue flame
Of life.

-st

That Tree

That rambling Bramley never stopped
swelling fruit. That first time you peeled
an apple to make a monkey’s tail of it.
That jaunty spiral, dangling. That monkey
who watched from his clambersome branch
desiring two things equally and at once:
to eat it up sour just as fast as it grew,
to hold his breath to will it longer
and longer, sweetly unsnapped
until the very last turn of the knife.
When the tree lay down exhausted
of fruiting, that knife, it found her too – carved
her skin for those who had visited her living.
You did not carve a monkey.
That mourner. That boy
who could never sit still at all, except rocked
by the wind and entranced
by some small magic. That still and empty wood
that is the body of a loved one. That snap
of the spiral once we stop growing.
That always desiring two things
equally and at once. That sour.
Oh, that sweet.

-Ankh Spice

The Residents

Daylight Blues – A newly married housewife repeating
repetitive chores staring at limited doors to nowhere dreams silent screams reminiscing happier scenes filled with boisterous laughter her voice now muted her worth rather
diminished to expected forced duties or face marital barking from an insecure domineering jealous failing weakling –

Homecoming – I hear him enter but these paper thin walls reveal domestic dark wars from neighbours existing in shadows some not even let out by drunken pathetic weaklings!
I hear her defend herself she’s had enough – A rushed scuffle something hitting the wall, I step back shaken, nauseous.

The Argument – How dare you talk back to me do you really think you are something without me, somehow free?
Shut up get out I have had enough of your acid accusations
your midnight liaisons – I dare you to touch me but you won’t you spineless coward, I know what you really are you make me sick! Your fiery cutting words have no effect anymore so either you leave or I will get my brother to sort you out –
Oh yeah? You really want to take that chance? I dare you hah!

Midnight Echoes – A voice a thump or a lamp falling but what about the muffled calling a hurried whisper – A door banging!
A shot, frozen to the spot liquid legs feet like mud – Should I?
A grinding a dragging floors creaking, oh God what is all this about? A knock! Heavy breathing a thud a scrape what…hello?

-© Don Beukes

Reflections

A partly unfolded
map of reflections.
Green veins.
Stilled into concrete

Every map, every blueprint
a mirror to the explorer.

Shows organs that beat,
Veins, routes towards the beat

Wires electrify inside a scaffold
of bones. So every action
becomes a roadway.

We are our creations.

-Paul Brookes

cento

Hot blue flame

you did not carve a monkey

a mirror to the explorer.

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

<

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/

Twilight Asylum

Frozen Eyes – Daily prodding confused nodding
Yes sir no ma’am, ‘You’re not my mother!’ – Look
into my eyes stop fidgeting widen your eyes stop
complaining look up – ‘Shut up I am fed up shut your
trap you old hag!’ Now calm down look this way no
that way are you even still here? Stop fidgeting!

Midnight Lullaby – Nocturnal healing cries soothe
my sore blood shot eyes as the midnight owl echoes
my existential meandering melody of suppressed
forced emotions blamed for defensive contortions
whilst the mocking laughing of a fox unleashes
my lost hoarse voice to violently protest in this
hell-hole confused constrictive nest my inner mess!
I rock myself to sleep as my broken emotions tend
to seep into my darkest demon alley sleep slipping
into the deep branded a confused helpless creep.

Morning Symphony – A bell a voice a familiar knell
a bark from a despised morning lark, ‘Up up no
no messing about mouth open pills down swallow
now, ‘ Fuck off fly off sign out you old bat enough!’
A familiar hypnotising melody booming in the
background in a far corner of the sterile room – A
lonely moaner crying out for attention even just a
brush of human touch but it is not meant for us
as we are drugged and hypnotised in our beloved
cursed twilight asylum sucking in provided helium…

-Don Beukes

*

The liquidation of all referentials, the sediment in a tea pot, tea leaves
peeling away like bright – I don’t want to repeat myself – like tinned
wonton soup. Once bought a tin of wonton soup, and read the label,
out loud, outside, enjoyed the delicate transparency of a clear broth,
and dumpling sriracha – can taste like battery acid, I have been told,
by those who know better, know the Möbius of a straw, a pork bone,
shrimp swimming in a blue tank, behind the white, moulded recliner.

-Alex Mazey

grey
fading
no pattern left
blunt letters

I have posted then many times with
comments on the larger buildings
up the road
decommissioned

in remission

some places come hardy
with time and some sort
of aging

some people come much the same
numbers adding to the years and
experience

are you one of those james
or do you look at the building
the marks
and wonder

say nothing james

this is all a challenge this year

while some are ignored
not explored

you can’t get round the back
there are watchmen and signs

saying, shouting to get back, get back

-sbm.

Next Sepia

In this next age
a sepia dawn will break
and sustain.

End time dust clouds,
shifting umbrae lands.
Now all are
crawlers, gloamers
in twilight sun rays.

First television
then just the sound,
now sometimes
distant radio, deep
far into the brown.

Please-
Some mouldy cheese
or black edged leaf.
The last vitamin D,
piled in quarters.

What was the argument?
Dunno.
Toilet paper, hand sanitiser,
people in old boats.

We let their children drown.
Watched them sink
into our northern seas.

Then a doubter wrapped
in self anger/
poisoned by malaria tablets,
pushed the button.

© Dai Fry 20th May 2020.

Columbarium with Brugmansia

In the quiet silver wind
datura becomes a hardy ghost.
Tendrils black with fleeing light,
Trumpets white as the mushroom-moon,
the only movements here.
Whoever planted that vine
in sorrowing soil by the wall
chose it by commoner’s name.
But no trumpets of angels rip the air
and there’s no salt from the clouds
when at last I find you there.
Grey as ashes, hidden well
behind the woody ropes of clamber
dangling sickly lamps.
Your name, that Mr., sits
as uneasy on my shoulders
as it always has, and when I brace,
uncling that vine, to be quite sure,
the plant’s persistence pulls us free.
What’s left – a fading hint of letters.
An absence none can read.

-Ankh Spice

Dreamer

Staring through the jagged hole
At the torn, diseased world
Tethering my soul
My eyes are drawn
Towards the windows like magnetic poles
Quickening my spirit
When I spot a sparkle of snow
Revealing a new world
Where life still glows
Leaning at the edge
This could be just a mirage, I know
Reaching for the dream
I let go

-Carrie Anne Golden

adumbration

echoed lives peer through
decades of paint, grime, and pain—
walls talk in layers

-Rich Follett

Underpinnings

There’s something relaxing
About a boot,
On a foot,
On a leg
Outstretched.

I’ve caught myself
Staring down
At my own
Sometimes,
After a day of labor, satisfied –

When the legs
Are weak, tired twigs
Ready to snap, but the whole body’s spared
By heavy, solid tree-stumps
On those fragile ends,

Providing strength
For next steps,
With the simple knowledge of
Strong, experienced feet
Underneath.

-st

The King

is an institution reflected in a puddle.
Crenellations are his crown.
He wears an office of windows

He sits in the puddle muses
why his fool wears a pointed hat
and all the notices are so decayed
he cannot discern their meaning.

Perhaps he is a prison where folk
cannot see out.
Perhaps he is an old hospital
that used to be a workhouse.

The fool jingles his cap.
The king does not know
the damp rots his bricks,
does not feel the flood.

-Paul Brookes

cento

For next steps

‘Grey as ashes, hidden well.
the king does not know

Bios and Links

-Alex Mazey

(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’

Twitter: @AlexzanderMazey

Instagram: alexmazey

Here is my interview of Alex:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/12/18/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-alex-mazey/

-Rich Follett

is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)

As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.

-Ankh Spice

is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on

Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry

-Carrie Ann Golden

is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.

-sonja benskin mesher

born , Bournemouth.

now

lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist

‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues

words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.

Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.

Here is my interview of sonja benskin mesher:

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2018/10/16/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-sonja-benskin-mesher/

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2019/11/02/wombwell-rainbow-interviews-don-beukes/